Google looks to the Stars in Pittsburgh

I put up a post the other day about the Deep Sky Urban Star Party in Leslie Park – I was lucky enough to be able to attend and, once I found the right abandoned swimming pool in Lawrenceville (there are two and of course, out of the two I went to the wrong one first) I found a really, great, really different kind of event.

I briefly mentioned in the post that Google Sky comes out of Pittsburgh -it does and we’re proud of it!
Google Sky, Moon and Mars have been born out of Googlers’ 20 percent time (kind of a personal, pet project time) and have really, really taken off.

Point yout Android phone at the sky and use it like a window to the Stars.
Many apps on other platforms have been modeled on the same idea. Whether you’re into stars and astronomy (honestly, I’m really not) or not it really is quite something to see.

At more than 5 million downloads it is a very, very popular Android app.

It was great to see Google staff out in the wild and to talk to them in person. John Taylor is a Google Sky Map engineer (see his post linked below) and gave a very interesting talk on what Google is doing to bring the sky a little closer to home.